Shadows
by yugified
Summary: AU. Tea is an angel, Yami is a shadow. They are worlds apart... or are they? Yes, the rating may go up. Twitch
1. Default Chapter

Shadows  
  
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Summary: Tea is an Angel. Yami is a Shadow. They are worlds apart... or are they?  
  
Disclaimer: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh! or any related characters.  
  
Warnings: Tea/Yami pairing  
  
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Tea was a girl from the Upperworld, and "angel", is what they called themselves. Just like everyone else from the Upperworld, she wore a pair of feathery wings on her back that were pure white(she cleaned them every day) and a glowing golden circle of light shone above her head. Now, in the Upperworld, no one wore long white dresses anymore and the land wasen't made of cloud. That was old-style. In fact, looking at the Upperworld you wouldn't find it different from any other city, other then the fact that everyone had a pair of wings and a golden halo above their head.  
  
It wasen't a big difference from any other human city.  
  
Except for that.  
  
But it turned out to make everyone else worlds apart.  
  
But there was something different you couldn't tell from the outside. In this world, no one spoke a harsh word, no one killed their fellow being, everyone smiled at everyone else, and no one was different enough from the rest to be shunned. It was perfect. "Boring" is what Tea called it. It was perfect, it was paradise, it was BORING and it lacked danger and excitement.  
  
But Tea had to be content with perfection. "Because," she often remined herself, "perfection is what everyone else strives for, and if I'm not happy with it, then there is no hope."  
  
Tea would sometimes find she couldn't fit in with this perfect world, and went looking for excitement. She'd bring her friends along in the hunt, too. They'd, of course, only agree to go with her because she called them "wusses".  
  
Unfortunately, no matter how long past their sleeptime they flew above the dark, damp skies of the Upperworld, they couldn't find any "excitement".  
  
That's why she didn't cry when the war broke out.  
  
All of the other angels in the upperworld wept. When their fathers were recruited for the war, they simply broke down and cried, like what they were: wusses. Tea herself was jelous of all the men who got to go out and fight while she was stuck at home practicing her beading.  
  
The war was against the Shadows. They were, from what she had heard, "nasty creatures sent by the Devil himself to bring sin to our perfect world." She hadn't heard much about them at all, so she didn't pass judgement on them and didn't think anyone else should be so quick to, either.  
  
But her parents, ignoring her when she expressed this opinion, did. And they said she was never, EVER, aloud to go to West Uppercity and would give her a serious punishment when she did. When Tea asked what was at West Uppercity they responded with "Just don't go there." When she asked persistantly, all they gave her was "something evil" and let it rest at that.  
  
Needless to say, Tea didn't listen.  
  
The night almost immediantly after that, Tea flew out the window of her bedroom without even leaving a note and headed straight west.  
  
She flew over the city, watching the bed of lights that had come on that night. No one else was in the air. No one flew at this time of night. And Tea could see why; she got cold quickly in the damp night air.  
  
Still, she flew, determined to find out what her parents had forbidden her from, her fluffy wings pounding thickly on the black night.  
  
Finally, after what seemed like an hour, she came upon an extremely tall mesh fence. It seemed to stretch upward and upward endlessly towards the heavens, determined to keep flyers and walkers(angels who were born without wings, or had them removed for some reason) alike from whatever lie beyond it.  
  
Tea flew right up to the fence and peered through it. What she saw was extremely odd, and she ghasped when she saw it. The ground beyond it was not solid; it was made out of whispy white cloud. Odder still, the cloud simply ended and trailed off into the night. Tea wondered if she had found the end of the universe.  
  
Tea peered wonderingly at it for a minute before she heard a voice call down from below her. "Hey, you! Girl! You're not supposed to be up here!"  
  
Below her was a guard, flying up quickly towards her. Tea wasen't sure what to do; if she let herself be caught, her mother and father would be extremely angry with her, and might even take her to the King of the Upperworld. This seemed like a big enough violation for it. If she flapped off the way she had came, well, she would go back to her normal little perfect and boring life.  
  
So Tea flew upwards as fast as her wings would allow her. She didn't know if the barrier ever ended or just stretched onward and onward, but it was worth the risk.  
  
She kept flying, her wings pounding hard against the air, willing herself to go faster and not get caught... she ignored the guard's cries of "Come back, girl! You don't know what's up there!". She was concentrating too much to listen to him.  
  
She was actually flapping so hard her wings were starting to hurt. Still she kept going upwards, stars from beyond the fence blurring past her as she went. Was it just her, or was the air getting thicker?  
  
Just before Tea gave up hope, her barrier abruptly ended, the end of it pointing up into the night sky. As quick as she could, Tea sailed over and began plummeting beyond the guard's reach. To her suprise, he was no longer following her but looking sadly on as she fell.  
  
Tea was sure the fall was longer then the time it took for her to get out of bed and fly up the fence. It seemed she was falling endlessly into a deep sea of darkness that would never end, and after a while, Tea convinced herself she had found the end of the world, and falling was all she would do for the rest of her life.  
  
After what seemed like eternity, the darkness around her slowly melted into the light of day, the stars disappearing into blueness. Looking down, she saw land on which Tea couldn't make out anything on it but dark specs with, from Tea's own experience, she assumed were wings.  
  
It occurred to her that if she fell from this height onto anywhere she would become a pancake. She tried to slow down, beating against the air to break her fall, but it didn't seem to do much use. She began to panic.  
  
Something flew towards her. Tea saw only a flash of it, she was falling so fast, but what she could make out made her stomach twist into a tight knot.  
  
The black, leathery face. The blood-red fangs. The dark, ruby, pupiless eyes. It was a Shadow.  
  
Tea seemed to collide with it. Then her world went black. 


	2. The weak are the weak

Shadows  
  
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(a/n: Hope you have as much fun reading as I did writing. ^_^)  
  
Disclaimer: I(Yugified) don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! or any related characters.  
  
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Téa opened her eyes and attempted to blink away the blurriness. There were dark figures standing over her, and a terrible throbbing sensation of pain in her right wing. One of the figures spoke. There was a hissing in the voice, as if the words were being spoken by a snake.  
  
"ssWell, sssYami? Sare you going to convert ssssher or not?"  
  
Her stomach twisted. She was surrounded by Shadows.  
  
She had never actually seen one but they had been described to her by her friends in mild detail. The fangs, red eyes and thin, spiky tail stood out in their tales about the creatures, who were supposedly more evil then poison.  
  
"Sssssshut up, Sssskyba."  
  
One of the Shadows was leaning over her. Up close she could see that their faces didn't look quite so evil... maybe just Humans gone wrong. The voice coming from the one kneeling over her was deeper, and had an almost human- like quality about it.  
  
One of the Shadows, who Tea assumed was Skyba, sniffed. "You alwayssss were weak, Yami. I bet you don't even have enough energy to convert sssher." The creature crossed it's arms and smiled, showing off his long, sharp, blood red fangs. "Do you need me to do it for you?"  
  
"Ssssshe isssss mine!" Yami snapped. Tea wasen't quite sure what was going on, but she didn't like it.  
  
"Fine," Skyba said darkly. He addressed the rest of the Shadows. "Let us leave. There is nothing else to see here. Let usss pray Yami will do hissss job." The rest of the creatures turned around and walked away, their spikey tails licking at their heels behind them.  
  
Téa looked up into the red shrouds that were the creature's eyes. She was suprised she wasen't afraid of the creature, for she had heard so much about how evil they were supposed to be. He looked suprisingly human in his facial features. His pupiless red eyes seemed to be deep and concerned. Those eyes she had been told could not show emotion or cry... His tricoloured hair flared up into spikes whilst his golden bangs fell around his face. He was almost naked except for a small piece of dark material tied around his waist, like the rest of the Shadows had been.  
  
"Which stands to reason," Téa thought, "since this place is so warm." She was quickly becoming uncomfortable in her thick nightgown.  
  
From his shoulderblades arose a pair of leathery wings lacking any sort of feathers. His skin, for some reason, was a dark, inky bluish-black. And lastly, the tips of his ears were pointed sharply.  
  
He peeled back his upper lip to expose his blood-red fangs and leaned towards her. Tea was reminded of the tales of beasts called vampires who would bite their victims to convert them into their kind. Was that what he was going to do?  
  
The creature hesitated, and then pulled away from her. Then he spoke to her. "Tell me, girl. Are you happy being an angel?"  
  
Téa hesitated. Then she nodded. "Yes. Yes I am."  
  
He hid his fangs back in his mouth and stood up. "Then I have no business touching you." He began to walk away.  
  
Téa let out a cry of agony as a searing pain shot through her right shoulderblade. The sound stopped Yami in his tracks. He sighed and turned around to help her.  
  
He examined her wing and informed her it was broken. "You're lucky it's not worssssse," he added. "Who knowssss what would have happened if I didn't break your fall."  
  
"Break... my fall?" Téa asked blankly. "Well, thank you. But why didn't you get hurt?"  
  
"It takesss more then a little fall to damage a Shadow," Yami informed her.  
  
Something occured to Téa and knotted itself in her stomach. "But.. but if I can't fly, how will I get back home?"  
  
Yami sighed. "That, I do not know."  
  
Téa bit her bottom lip and tried to hold back tears. The thought of not being able to go back home terrified her. Yami gazed at her sympathetically and ran the back of his hand over her cheek. She looked back up at him and he smiled in the kindest way one with fangs could.  
  
"I could help you heal your wing, if you want," he offered softly. She smiled back at him.  
  
***  
  
"I'm ssssorry if this hurts," Yami said softly, plucking out the blood- stained feathers from her wing. They both sat on Yami's bed in a small cave on the side of a mountain. It was quite homey, an arrangment of threadbare furniture arranged on circular carpet covering the entire floor of the fair- sized cave. "It's alright," she sighed. "It doesn't hurt that much, and I doubt I'd get the blood out of my feathers anyways."  
  
He worked in silence for a moment before speaking. "May I know your name?"  
  
"Téa. Téa Gardner," Téa told him. "I am Yami Mutou." Yami hesitated for a moment. "You're from the Upperworld, aren't you?"  
  
"Yes, I am," Téa paused. "In fact, I need to ask you something." "Yesss?" "Well..." she paused again. "The Upperworlders... they don't think highly of the Shadows."  
  
Yami sighed and began to clean her wound. "Yes, I know."  
  
"Well.... do you happen to know why?"  
  
Yami was silent. He concentrated on his work of repairing her wing, but Téa couldn't see what he was doing. He carefully wrapped gauze bandage around the broken bone, holding the two broken pieces together until Téa felt she could no longer bend her wing. For a while she thought he wasen't going to answer her question at all.  
  
Finally, once he was finished, he stood up and walked over to the mouth of the cave. Téa quickly folded her good wing and followed him.  
  
The view from Yami's home was somewhat impressive. The mountain was near the edge of the forest. One looking over it could clearly view the city that lay beyond the ancient, leafy green trees. In the middle of the forest was a small clearing with a pond in it. Téa could only imagine what view Yami must have at night, standing at the mouth of the cave, gazing at the full moon in the star-filled sky, below it the city, dotted with yellow and green lights, and in the forest, the pond reflecting the full moon.  
  
Yami steadied his gaze to rest upon the sky, upon which a bed of gray clouds lay that day, warning of thunderstorm. He didn't avert his gaze as he spoke. "We, the Sshadowssss, considered by the angels to be a racccce of vile and terrible creaturessss, are nothing more then a race that is willing to do what it needsss to in order to sssurvive. Life in the Lowerland isssn't nearly as good as you angelssss have it."  
  
Téa looked at him curiously. He continued. "Up there there is plenty of food and ssshhhelter for everyone, and there is no sssickness. Here, we have to fight in order to get what we need. It is survival of the fitessss. We kill our own food and have to defend our territory, and trust no one. This cave itself had to be defended from several other Shadowsss that had their eye on it."  
  
"Here in the Lowerland, the weak are the weak, and the weak die. And that is why the Upperangelssss think usss so terrible."  
  
Yami continued. "I know no one in the Lowerland that wouldn't like to have it as easy as the Upperworld doesss. Plenty of food for everyone, no disease and enough homes for every being. And that... is why we are waging war on the Upperworld."  
  
Yami finally turned his head to look at her. "Do you understand, Téa?"  
  
Téa gulped and looked up at him. These beings truly lived the life of danger she'd always wanted. Why she was born an angel, she would never know. Téa nodded. "Yes, I do."  
  
Yami sighed. "You may stay with me until your wing heals. Then you will go back up to the Upperworld."  
  
"To be destroyed with the rest of them?" Téa asked quietly.  
  
Yami looked into her eyes softly and ran his inky black hand along her cheek. "You will only be dessstroyed faster here, my dear. An angel is an angel, and angelsss aren't meant to live in the Lowerland."  
  
"Yeah," Téa sighed. "Just like the weak are the weak, and the weak die."  
  
Yami stared at her hard for a moment. Wondering, thinking, pitying, Téa didn't know. His eyes had no pupils, but the light did shine in them.  
  
His hand fell away from her cheek. "I need to ressst," Yami told her. "A fall won't hurt a Shadow, but catching an angel does take energy. Wake me if anyone comes." He went to his bed and curled up on it, folding his leathery wings around him like a bat.  
  
Téa stood at the mouth of the cave, looking out. Her white nightgown flowed behind her. A tear ran down her cheek. The weak were the weak...  
  
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(A/N: I hate doing this... but, I'd REALLY appreciate reviews. ^-^; I can't improve my writing without being told how I can do it.)  
  
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